Oracle Bone Script
- Daniel Kim
- 2015년 11월 23일
- 2분 분량
The first Chinese character was Oracle Bone Script. The way of writing character, which ancient people used, was pictograph. It's an original form of the Chinese Character. Oracle bone script had been used B.C.1600 ~ B.C.1100. The ancient people usually had carved script on a tortoise carapace or any other bones. (xiaohehanlu, 2010)
The way of ancient people's thinking is quite interesting and creative. A picture attached below, which from an article of BBC, indicates a development and relation of the meaning with the character. However, people used sharp stuff to carve the script, so the character doesn't look really nice. (BBC, 2014)
[rì], the character represents the 'Sun' in Chinese.
In nineteenth century, people used oracle bones as a medicine (dragon bones, people in ancient time believed animal bones as dragon bones), braying the bones. In 1899, there was a Chinese scholar Wang Yi Rong (王懿蓉) who discovered oracle bone script and oracle bones. As oracle bones used as a medicine, while Wang Yi Rong was suffered from Malaria, and his friend Liu E came to see Wang Yi Rong. There was an oracle bone beside Wang Yi Rong. By the time, they both realized there are some strange stuffs written on the bone and finally found out that there are scripts on oracle bones, and that's the start of the Oracle Bone Script. Since he found the first oracle bones, he started to collect all the bones, and later in 1903 he published a book called "<<铁云藏龟>>" (tie'yun'cang'gui) with Liu E (刘鹗) and other Chinese scholars. (감나무, 2015)
In the YouTube, I have found a nice video about Oracle Bone Script. It is Archaeosoup Productions' video, and they also mentioned about discoveries of oracle bones, and what they are telling you is exactly story same as mine. Here is the hyperlink of that video:
References
http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_5d70a6300100h8ya.html (Information of Wang Yi Rong and pic of oracle bone script)
http://kin.naver.com/qna/detail.nhn?d1id=11&dirId=110802&docId=228756647&qb=7JmV7J2Y7JiB&enc=utf8§ion=kin&rank=1&search_sort=0&spq=0&pid=SVsBispySo8ssZ4ErzZsssssss4-229731&sid=T9goL1TMlywDrQAoVJxbAA%3D%3D (Information of Wang Yi Rong)
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